Fall 2007COLLEGE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS

AlumnusJames Earl JonesTakes Center StagePLUS

China Shakes the World

Grads and Debt

The Trouble with Ethanol

The Plight of America’s Middle Class

TIYA MILES CONFRONTSMISCONCEPTIONS IN HERWORK AND LIFEby James Tobin

TIYA MILES WAS AN UNDERGRADUATE at Har-vard in the early !""#s when she met the man whowould become her husband. He was a Montanannamed Joseph Gone, a Native American of the GrosVentre tribe, neighbors of the Assiniboine and theBlackfeet. As their relationship grew, she says, “A

whole world opened to me.”In that world, she took an ex-

traordinary intellectual journey. Itled to graduate school at Emoryand the University of Minnesota,then to archives where she uncov-ered the linked lives of a NativeAmerican man and an African-American woman, both longdead; and finally to her study ofthat couple in Ties That Bind:The Story of an Afro-CherokeeFamily in Slavery and Freedom(California, $##%), recentlyawarded the Frederick JacksonTurner Award from the Organiza-tion of American Historians, theLora Romero Distinguished FirstBook Award from the AmericanStudies Association, and the pres-tigious Hiett Prize in the Human-ities from the Dallas Institute ofHumanities and Culture. Eventhough the book is a success,Miles acknowledges that the pathto producing her scholarship wasa difficult and complicated one.

REALITY CONFOUNDINGTHE IDEAL

At Harvard, Miles says, “I was doing African-Ameri-can studies, and I was really passionate about that.”Her knowledge of Native Americans consisted of only“a little history and a lot of mythology,” including theimage, long cherished by many African Americans, ofblack slaves who “ran away to the Indians.”

To Miles, now a recently promoted associate pro-fessor of American Culture and Afroamerican andAfrican Studies, that image symbolized the will toself-liberation and solidarity between two oppressedpeoples. But as she and Joseph Gone headed towardmarriage, she found reality confounding the ideal.

“We learned that our families—both families ofcolor—were not very well-equipped to relate with

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one another,” she says. “I had a fantasy that peopleof color would have a natural affinity and supporteach other. We learned in a very personal way thatthat was not necessarily the case. There were allkinds of misconceptions and even a sense of com-parison about who was treated worse. I was disillu-sioned to learn this. But it made me feel committedto try to do something to combat all the misinfor-mation and the negative emotion that came withit.” Perhaps, she thought, she could find historicalprecedents for Afro-Indian unity.

In graduate school, reading widely about Afro-Indian relations in early America, Miles spied a foot-note about a Cherokee warrior-soldier named ShoeBoots and the African-American mother of his chil-dren—the first Cherokee-black relationship to berecognized as a marriage by the Cherokee Nation.

“I thought, ‘Aha, this is going to be that revolu-tionary story I’m looking for,’” she says.

She collected all the surviving evidence of ShoeBoots’ family. It revealed the complexity of race rela-tions in antebellum America in a way few historianshave glimpsed before. But it was not the inspirationalstory Miles had hoped to find.

The woman named Doll—“a tall, strong-made woman,”according to another slave—was not Shoe Boots’ wifebut his slave. He had ac-quired her in the late !&"#swhen she was a teenager.She bore five of his childrenand lived with him for some'# years. But he never re-leased her from enslave-ment. At one point, in fact,he gave her and one of theirchildren to another slave-owner. After Shoe Boots’death in !($", Doll made aclaim for his U.S. veterans’benefits—he had fought theCreek Indians with AndrewJackson—and she testifiedthat they had been married“in the Cherokee way.” De-nied at first, she finally wonher claim. When her lastowner died, Doll, by then an

old woman, was declared free, and she lived into theCivil War.

It pained Miles to confront evidence that someNative Americans, rather than rejecting the racismof white Americans, seemed to have adopted it.

“I’m sure many researchers who do this kind ofwork—social history—read their documents andfeel distraught,” she says. “It’s awful, it’s horrible, youwish the history hadn’t happened. But there it is.”

Still, within the larger picture of a society drivenby race, she found moments when “people recog-nized each other as human beings and were willingto stand up to these incredible systems that werebearing down on them, and it’s important for us toknow that people could and did do that.” And if shecould not forgive Shoe Boots, she says she came to adeeper understanding of the influence of social con-text on human relationships.

“I found a story that was mainly about people whowere in desperate circumstances and tried to survive,and who, in those circumstances, did awful things toone another,” she says. “Putting this story, this fami-ly, into the context of U.S. colonization of native

people and American slavery helpedme to understand howpeople, no matter whatrace, can turn against eachother. They were just try-ing to survive in a situa-tion that was deeply inhu-mane. I do hold ShoeBoots accountable. But hewas a citizen of a nationthat was caught up in ahorrible moment.”

Miles continues to explorethe world of Cherokees andblack slaves. Her latest re-search deals with a Cherokeenamed Chief James Vannwho owned a plantation andblack slaves in northernGeorgia. She and JosephGone, an LSA assistant pro-fessor of psychology andAmerican Culture, are theparents of twin girls.

James Tobin (’78) is anassociate professor ofjournalism at Miami Uni-versity in Oxford, Ohio.He is the author of ErniePyle’s War and To Con-quer the Air: The WrightBrothers and the GreatRace for Flight.

As an editor of thisbook, Miles con-tributed to scholar-ship about Afro-Indian relations inearly America.

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iversityofCaliforniaPress;(righ

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FrancisYellow

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